Unfiltered scrutiny of prisons is needed

ON MEDIA ACCESS TO PRISONS

Published
6:51 pm PDT, Thursday, July 26, 2012

California has had some of the tightest restrictions on news media access to its prisons since 1996, when the Department of Corrections unilaterally decided that it would no longer grant requests by reporters to interview specific inmates. The policy also prohibited prisoners from sending confidential letters to journalists.

Corrections officials have always tried to argue that they do provide transparency of prison life because reporters who visit the institutions can speak with inmates they encounter at random. The prison folks also defend the restrictions as a way to prevent the news media from glamorizing inmates and their crimes. Neither rationalization holds up to scrutiny.

The option of random interviews is not the same as giving the media access to specific inmates to pursue a specific subject matter - which could be anything from an investigation into that prisoner's claims of innocence to the conditions within the facility. And the notion that news coverage necessarily "glamorizes" criminals is pure nonsense. Less filtered media access to prisons is just as likely to give the public a more complete and empathetic appreciation of what goes on behind those walls - which is why the prison guards' union is supporting legislation (AB1270) by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, to lift the interview restriction.

We were disturbed to learn that the Department of Corrections opposed AB1270. Similar measures have cleared the Legislature only to be vetoed by Govs. Pete Wilson, Gray Davis and Arnold Schwarzenegger. It's time to test another governor's commitment to transparency in a system that consumes one of the largest slices of taxpayer dollars.